Happy Freedom Week

We have two very special birthdays this week, Canada on July 1 and America on July 4. Both countries claim to stand for freedom.

I have long been alarmed at the general decline of democracy in the world as a whole. We thought that 1989, when the Berlin Wall came down, was the triumph of democracy. We now see that it was actually the peak of democracy, which has been in slow decline ever since.

Let's review what freedom is all about.

The vast majority of people would prefer to live in a "free" society. But there are two slants on freedom, "freedom to" and "freedom from". A simple example involves smoking, should people have "freedom to" smoke or should they have "freedom from" secondhand smoke? Another obvious example is gun ownership.

Democracy is like an exercise program in that it is difficult but we are better off if we do it. Dictatorship has never gone away because there are always people who find it easier to let someone do their thinking for them. The ultimate "freedom from" can be to let someone else do your thinking for you.

One issue with democracy is that it is possible to be a democracy on paper but it is someone outside the electoral process, or even someone outside the official government altogether, that holds the real power. Maybe there is a certain group or family that is able to arrange it so it is their members that always hold the important positions of power, and the official democracy ends up meaning little.

A striking difference that I notice between dictatorships and what most people would consider as "free" societies is in the nature of the laws. "Free" societies tend to have laws that are clear and well-defined while dictatorships tend to have laws that are subjective and open to interpretation.

We should all be law-abiding citizens. But there is such a thing as having too much respect for authority. People in positions of authority are made of the same kind of flesh and blood as everyone else. They make mistakes and are sometimes vulnerable to corruption. A hallmark of dictatorships is that someone in a uniform is always right. Dictators really like people who have unquestioning respect for authority.

Another hallmark of dictatorships is the leader having a security organization that answers directly to him and to which he can issue orders without answering to anyone. The security organization is outside the structure of the ordinary military. This is sometimes referred to as a "Praetorian Guard".

Many have wondered why America has so many different police departments. The answer is "freedom". There is no single powerful security organization that a potential dictator might seek to gain control of. Britain works in a similar way, with no national police force. Some western countries do have national police forces.

Dictators usually come to power through the democratic process but then find a way to seize more power. A popular route to dictatorship is for a president to amend the constitution to make himself "president for life", or for the indefinite future.

We tend to prefer people who don't complain about things over people that do complain. But complaining is part of the mechanism that keeps a society free. If people never complain about anything you can be sure that they will eventually lose their freedom. Dictators really like people who just fit in, do what they're told, and never complain.

Democracy goes against human nature because we like to think that we are special. But what democracy basically means is that no one is special. Everyone has inherently equal rights. If we want to be special we have to earn it, and we have to earn it as an individual. No one should be special just because of who they are, but that goes against the human nature of wanting to be special.

Dictators don't like individualists and people who think for themselves. Every dictator promotes a strong sense of community. It is much easier to control a society where people think as a group, as well as where "everybody knows everybody else's business".

Dictators prefer people to socialize at community events or in the marketplace. This makes it easier to see who's friends with who and helps to preclude private socializing that might result in people plotting to start a separate church or a political party that might threaten the dictator's authority.

Part of the difficulty of being free is that if we are free, because we live in a free society, then the people around us must also be free. We want to be free but we want the people around us to think like we do and "fit in" with us. But freedom means that the people around us might think completely differently from us and have no obligation to agree with or to "fit in" with us. Freedom does not mean to agree but to agree to disagree.

Being free means being exposed to "fake news" because the only way to be free of potentially "fake news" is to give someone the power to decide for us what is and isn't "fake news". But then that person would have the power of a dictator and we would no longer be free. This is just one of the prices of being free.

Freedom is not a panacea. Freedom itself will not bring about a paradise because it only allows us to be more of what we are. How well freedom works depends on what we are. Freedom is just better than not being free.

If we bring a group of people to a free society who are not able to handle freedom they will tend to make the "community" into an unofficial collective dictatorship. There will be "unwritten rules", beyond the written law, and the less able to handle freedom they are the more "unwritten rules" there will likely be.

A major disadvantage of dictatorships is that people tend to be promoted based on "who you know", rather than "what you know". Giving people jobs based on their friend and family connections ultimately weakens the society.

I see a true sign of democracy as being the ability of anyone to get a phone without registering the phone number.

For more about freedom there is the compound posting "The Meaning Of Freedom" July 2021.